It is pretty silly on Stanford's part to try and ignore the situation for so long. Now they must pay the piper. Its really hard to argue about the threat of flood from a 120 old dam on the SA fault (thought that was kinda funny).
There's really no great mystery on what to do here...very old dams are being being removed all over the country. Its just time to do it here now.

Posted by Steve Rothert
a resident of another community
on Jan 30, 2013 at 1:04 pm

I represent American Rivers, one of the groups working to address the problems caused by Searsville for fish and the creek. We appreciate the attention to this issue, but I would like to clarify that Beyond Searsville Dam coalition is not responsible for the National Marine Fisheries Service - they initiated the investigation independently.

In addition, American Rivers' primary interest is not dam removal but to restore steelhead above Searsville Dam, which can be done in a number of ways from constructing fish ladders or fishways to dam removal.

The primary reason for the decline of steelhead and salmon populations in California is the loss of access to suitable spawning habitat caused by dams like Searsville. If California wants to protect its heritage of salmon and steelhead and the jobs these fish support, we have to get them back to their home waters.

Posted by Wondering?
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jan 30, 2013 at 3:49 pm

One has to wonder--just how important is the so-called steelhead trout? Does it contribute to the Bay Area economy? What will this environmentalist attack on Stanford cost all of us in the long run? And what are we going to get back in the long run?

Some of these laws need to be rethought, in light of some sort of rational cost/benefit analysis.

The steelhead trout contributed a lot to the area - back when they were plentiful, people caught and ate them. It's really sad that steelhead have been missing from the creek for so long that Wondering? is more concerned about Stanford's pocketbook than the fish that used to support so many other species, including people.

Posted by Wondering?
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jan 31, 2013 at 2:35 pm

&gt; It's really sad that steelhead have been missing from
&gt; the creek for so long

If the dam has been around since before 1919, that's almost a hundred years. The Steelhead obviously didn't go immediately extinct. But more to the point, people obviously found something else to eat.

Human/wildlife conflicts are always going to occur. At their heyday the American Buffalo was supposed to be about 65M in number. Got any idea what life would be like in the US today with 65M+ buffalo roaming the land--tearing through farm land, and towns? As majectic as that beast might have been, there simply was no way modern American could have coexisted with it.

Got to wonder if maybe it's not time to say goodbye to tis species too?

Posted by Eric
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jan 31, 2013 at 3:42 pm

Good thing we took out those savage buffalo, else they would still be out there laying dangerous methane emitting cow pies - and the threats to public sanitation, what if we stepped in it? :)

Anyone with a basic understanding of ecology knows that you do not look at just the steelhead and it's economic or substance relationship to people - so please don't weaken the argument by saying 'people could be eating them'.

However, they could be important to the control of aquatic invertebrates - maybe they eat mosquito larvae that could be vectors for West Nile Virus? Maybe there are some larger marine organisms that rely on steelhead for their food source, and are in turn dwindling in numbers?

Ecosystems have complex interactions and relationships that are not always obvious, they have grown and adapted to the conditions of SF Creek for thousands and thousands of years - well before westerners arrived. A dam with no alternative means for getting the fish up to their spawning grounds was installed in a few short years, these fish never stood a chance.

Posted by Wondering?
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Jan 31, 2013 at 4:30 pm

&gt; Ecosystems have complex interactions and relationships that
&gt; are not always obvious,

That's true. But what's also true is these ecosystems are always in flux. There is no such thing as "eco-stasis". Species are constantly coming and going, sometimes with dramatic speed.

The tendency for modern "environmentalists" to try to preserve the status quo has led to public policy decisions that have backfired. Example--anti-logging efforts have led to forests not be "cleaned" of deadwood, and the like. Result--massive wildfires that ended up being almost uncontainable.

Congress needs to rethink some of the "enabling" laws that allow concerned parties that do not have any hard proof of system damage due to the displacement of a species to tie up construction projects, or force unnecessary destruction of dams.

Posted by Kathryn
a resident of Charleston Meadows
on Jan 31, 2013 at 7:41 pm

@ Wondering - We are talking about wildlife. not opening a restaraunt or buying stock for our kids futures. They are fish, who have a RIGHT as LIFE to LIVE, and this dam got in the way. By right of nature's right to EXSIST - they matter.

Posted by Eric
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on Feb 1, 2013 at 10:22 am

Wondering

Your arguments hold less water than the future area above the Searsville Dam (did you see what I did just there :)

You are right, ecosystems are in flux - but these changes are responses to changes in the environment due to things like weather, catastrophic weather, seasonality, you know - natural occurrences. Plopping a dam down with no means for the fish to reach their spawning beds is not a normal part of the flux. It is a man-made modification, not a part of the flux. Maybe the fish will see things your way and grow wings and fly over the dam?

Your second point, if we can call it a point, which it is not because you probably have a very thin understanding of modern forestry practices. Now we are blaming the environmentalists for wildfires?

For one thing, governmental natural resource management agencies like the US Forest Service and Cal. State Parks, do regularly perform deadwood salvage operations to clear SOME dead wood - although some standing dead wood does provide habitat for species like woodpeckers. They also do things like thinning the forest to create 'defensible space' to prevent wildfires from burning too hot and turning catastrophic.

In fact the major cause behind such massive wildfires is due to the fire suppression or wildland firefighting that USED to be a regular practice for USFS and the NPS. Until we realized that practice was causing undergrowth to create ladder fuels which were in turn burning the crown of the tree and forest. So through science, we were able to figure out this is not a healthy practice and we no longer due this.

Try researching fire ecology. You would have been better served by using the case study of the spotted owl - an actual example of an endangered species issue that was created by 'environmentalists' to stop logging, which then turned against them.

Source? A science degree in forestry and over 10 years in the field. Try backing your opinions with accurate examples and not stale misguided anecdotes

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